Abstract:
Health professions educators are answering the call for interprofessional education (IPE) because it has been shown to enhance collaborative care in practice, thereby improving patient outcomes. IPE also provides a platform for early professional socialization, potentially affecting the accuracy of stereotypes among pre-professional students. The purpose of this study is to implement an interprofessional simulation with nursing, respiratory therapy (RT), and speech language pathology (SLP) students, and using the Student Stereotype Rating Questionnaire (SSRQ), evaluate how an IPE simulation approach may alter stereotypes that learners carry with them related to themselves and professions other than their own. Using the SSRQ, which examines perceptions based on nine professional characteristics, participants were asked to rate the extent to which they believe the attributes apply to either their own profession (autostereotypes), other professions (heterostereotypes), or their own profession as seen by others (perceived autostereotypes). A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design was used, and descriptive statistics were analyzed. Participants were also asked rate their impressions of the IPE experience. Results showed a significant difference from pre-IPE simulation to post-IPE simulation in nursing heterostereoptype, autostereotype, and perceived autostereotype scores. No significant difference was seen in hetereostereotypes of RT and SLP students pre-IPE simulation to post-IPE simulation. Major findings, limitations, implications for health professions education, conclusions, and recommendations for research are presented.
